Person Woman Man Camera TV
"Person Woman Man Camera TV" (disclaimer: parody link) has become a meme today, thanks to Trump. He seems to be betraying a deep-seated concern about whether each candidate's cognitive ability will become a liability in the election. Widespread concerns voiced about his own definitely undercut any accusations he can credibly level against Biden (and for the record, I think there's plenty there as well). I'm not a behavioral health specialist, but I have seen versions of what he has described dozens of time when I sat in on mental health evaluations for clients of mine facing criminal charges. Legal competency exams have a very low hurdle to overcome (I once had a client declare that he was hearing voices talking to him during the evaluation, and still found competent), and this type of limited short-term memory test is only intended to diagnose severe deficiencies. The only time I've ever seen someone fail it was for a client with significant developmental disabilities and an IQ of approximately 70.
Either way, Trump seems earnestly proud of his achievement. The versions of the tests I've witnessed are usually much more specific, like "red apple, school bus, maple tree" so I'm willing to grant that Trump was just giving a generic example of the categories of the test (e.g. "fruit, vehicle, tree" for my example) but in many ways that's worse if he can't remember beyond that.
To be fair, if the test was administered to me, I admit I likely would not be able to recall the specific list. I'm guessing that he just made up a generic list as an illustrative example by just looking around his immediate environment. I categorize this incident as roughly within the same penumbra as his South Korea gaffe where he tried to flex how knowledgeable he was about the country and then getting the population of Seoul off by 28 million (The most convincing theory for that gaffe was he googled Seoul and saw "38m" listed under elevation). I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone, even in his position, to actually know the population of Seoul, but when he heralds it as an example of how knowledgeable he is and then stumbles, it just looks embarrassing and backfires for me.
I think everyone probably agrees that cognitive ability in executive positions matters (Woodrow Wilson's illness in the latter part of his term is an example of the risks involved), but how do you properly test for it? Being asked to repeat five things you heard 10 minutes prior does not seem sufficient by any means, especially when you're dealing with the multitude of issues that a President would. So who exactly would this achievement convince? Obviously someone who already hates Trump won't change their mind, but would someone on the margin be swayed? If you're a die-hard Trump supporter, does this development concern you? I'm really curious, because his recounting seemed earnest to me and not the usual "probably trolling" vibe that I usually get. I could be way off though.